You may have heard that the EPA Secretary, Scott Pruitt, keeps promising to put together a "Red Team" to support him in his rejection of climate science. He's getting names from various unsavoury organisations, I gather. I doubt any of those organisations have suggested WUWT owner and promoter of "climate hoax" conspiracy theories, Anthony Watts. However, it looks as if Anthony is hinting he's on the team.

I stumbled across something at WUWT this morning that suggests this. It was in among a lot of self promotion as an AGU member "in good standing", some misogyny, and various other rantings from Anthony. (What are the criteria for good vs bad standing among AGU membership? If it ever decided to draw a line Anthony would never appear on the "good" side.)

Here's what Anthony wrote, implying that he is already on Scott Pruitt's "Red Team". He was writing how he dislikes New Orleans and doesn't think he'd get enough money from his fans to go this year, so he won't try (or something like that :D). (AGU17 is at New Orleans.) Then he wrote how it's not a bad thing he won't be going, saying:

On the plus side, as Gavin Schmidt points out, there doesn’t seem to be any climate skeptics [sic] presenting this year. So they likely won’t get harassed in person.

He then put up a tweet from Gavin:

Interesting point of reference for the climate "red team". As far as I can tell none of them are giving any presentations at next week's @theAGU - the world's preeminent meeting for climate science (20K+ attendees). Most I can find is one as a co-author.

I pointed out to Dr. Schmidt on Twitter that I’ve attended and presented on years past, but chose not to attend this year. No response. It’s a fair point to ask if part of the reason is that “red team” members don’t feel welcome, or perhaps they submitted talks, papers, and posters, but were rejected?

What a loaded and conspiratorial comment.

First of all Anthony is putting himself forward as being on Scott Pruitt's "Red Team". (His fans will probably end up being so disappointed.)

Secondly, why on earth should the Director of GISS respond to every weirdo who replies to one of his tweets?

Thirdly, Anthony's putting forward a false conspiracy theory that the AGU rejects "talks, papers and posters" submitted to the Fall Meeting. He hasn't given any examples and there are none that I know of, at least not for posters. There would be some constraints on papers and the main presentation sessions (as opposed to posters), such as they have to have some basis in fact. However as far as I know, AGU doesn't reject posters or endorse them. Heck, Anthony himself has been able to have a poster. Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenburger had a poster. Willis Eschenbach had a poster. And if those aren't bad enough, there have been the silliest, scientifically implausible, greenhouse effect denying posters presented in the past.

A "stalk free" AGU Fall Meeting this year

Going back to the first quote from Anthony (above), about how fake sceptics will avoid harassment at AGU. When Anthony went to AGU I'm thinking he would have loved to have been harassed, instead he was mostly ignored. As for stalking, that's one of the lures he's used to get money from his fans in the past. On several previous occasions he's told his fans how he was planning to stalk scientists.

I hope to attend so that I can cover what is being presented in the world of climate science, while keeping tabs on the antics of people like Michael Mann, John Cook, Peter Gleick, and some of the other players.

The 2014 AGU Fall Meeting is coming up in just over a week, and I hope to attend so that I can cover what is being presented in the world of climate science, while keeping tabs on the antics of people like Michael Mann, Peter Gleick, and some of the other players.

The AGU fall meeting is coming up, and I hope to attend so that I can cover what is being presented in the world of climate science, while keeping tabs on the antics of people like Michael Mann, Peter Gleick, and some of the other players.

42 comments:

AFAIK, AGU membership is granted to anyone paying the fee ... and that's about it. It grants you the right not to pay the AGU membership when you try to submit a talk/poster at AGU (plus various goodies ?) and maybe a reduced price for AGU papers ? I can't remember, I never went to AGU (EGU is another matter)

As Phil above says, oh please God, let Anthony be on Team Denier. Could I nominate Tim Ball (if he can be coaxed out of his Rambo-style hideaway) and Eric Worrall too? If the WUWT fanboy who posted here about sentient photons could be identified, I'd add him to the list.

Would it be too much to ask for a large contingent of Russians with connections to the FSB as well? After it, it seems it is impossible to live through a day without bumping into one, if we believe the recent histories of Trump administration members.

... Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer review – the supposed gold standard of scientific merit – and the operation of the UN's top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). ...

As for the Red Team, I'm surprised you guys aren't welcoming the opportunity to publicly expose all our skeptic talking points... ;-)

Yes Eric, we know. Far from conspiring together to commit fraud, climate scientists risked prosecution under FoI to avoid collaborating with people they considered to be committing scientific fraud. And they tried to prevent studies they considered to be fraudulent being published.

It seems your opinion about fraudulent science depends on whose wide it is on.

"Outside observers" still do not understand the peer review process: it is an explicit gate-keeping exercise. Not all opinions have equal value. Facts matter. Proper methodology matters. Not so to many outside observers. Fred Pearce, despite supposedly being such a good science journalist, definitely fumbled in his coverage of climategate. He failed to realise, for example, Phil Jones anger of having to cite two papers that experts in the field considered outright wrong. A scientist does not want to cite obviously wrong papers, but many a journalist would, and then write a he-said-she-said article.Or imagine the furor that a journal would publish a paper that clearly was not peer reviewed by experts in the field, as they would have pointed to multiple problematic issues. Not highly technical stuff that required a peer reviewer to try to do his/her own analysis, but right there in plain sight. Or imagine an Editor asking a peer reviewer for a clearly formulated rejection - knowing, as an expert in the area, it is a bad paper, but unwilling to do what other Editors sometimes do: send a desk-rejection after having looked at the paper themselves first. All normal in the world of science, but in the world of "all opinions have equal value, well, unless there's some ideological view that needs to be highlighted", the value of facts is seriously underrated.

What Marco said. Fred Pierce got it scandalously wrong and did an enormous injustice to some quiet and some not-so-quiet heroes of climate science.

Plus, why is Eric still stuck in the distant past? Has he nothing from this decade to "prove" that climate science is a hoax? Next he'll be doing a Tim Ball and claiming something about Hubert Lamb or Freedom Water.

As for exposing all fake skeptic talking points (been there, done that) - I figure that's one of the underlying strategies - take researchers away from their research to "debate" the "gravity is a hoax" crowd. (Which side of the flat earth debate are you on, Eric?)

Some people in the USA probably even think that global warming will stop if only scientists would stop studying climate change.

cRR, I noted on Sou's polar bear thread that this meme surfaced just after Harvey et al 2017 was published. My suspicion at the time was that this was a gambit to discredit the threat to polar bears by pointing to inappropriate interpretation of a suggestive image, but it doesn't seem to have caused* as much furor as I'd expected - your link is the first one I've seen discussing the situation. Of course, I haven't really been focussed on matters online this last week or so, so I may have completely missed any discussion...

Do you know if Harvey et al 2017 inspired malicious recirculation of Nicklen's old footage, or was it simple coincidence that this came out of the woodwork again?

On Fred Pearce, his coverage of the climate 'debate' was the primary reason that I stopped reading New Scientist for a broad-brush view of science, where once I used to devour it every week for decades. I was aghast that he could write material that was so obviously at odds with the facts, and I was appalled that the editors of NS didn't appear to even blink at putting Pearce's anomalous pieces into print.

These days I just dip into Nature for technical cutting-edge, and The Conversation and maybe the Guardian for a finger-in-the-wind. I don't know how many readers NS might have lost through Pearce's inexplicable derailment, but I doubt that I'll personally ever pay a cent for another copy again. I've certainly not recommended it to undergrads for years, and in the 'old days' I used to urge them to subscribe in order to broaden their appreciation of disciplines besides their own.

'Do you know if Harvey et al 2017 inspired malicious recirculation of Nicklen's old footage, or was it simple coincidence that this came out of the woodwork again?' - I don't know, Bernard J. But with 'simple coincidences' I am, of course, rather a skeptic. I did see your question around a few times, but no info.

I know this is being excessively optimistic, but a red team that was scientifically competent and honest might provide a solution to the GOP's problem of having an electoral liability (and one that with time becomes an ever greater liability) in climate change. They could pretend to be the people who proved to everyone's satisfaction that climate change is a threat to be addressed.

Of course, with Pruitt in charge, its hard to see any chance that that is the route they are taking. Upon the engagement of the usual people (the Peabody coal gang et al) we will know for sure its going to be business as usual.

AndyG55 is a nutcase. He usually hangs around JoNova's conspiracy blog. He comment-bombs drivel and personal insults. I ignore him mostly, there is no point having a discussion with the mentally-deranged.

But you are right, these nutcases usually get free rein as long as they are climate change deniers. Over at WUWT there was AndyG55 and one or two others I cannot recall the name of, but I think you will know who I mean.

Situations like this reinforce the idea I have that many of these climate change denier blogs are simply set ups, the owners are being compensated somehow for their time. Every single Denier blog I have dealt with has unbalanced Admin practices when it comes to climate change deniers vs climate change proponents.

The best advice is to not respond at all. The symptom of their pathology is they want attention, plus they want to "virtue signal" to others in the blog what big mean deniers they are. I think Andy-Pandy's record with me is a 5 or 6 replies to one comment I made, each reply becoming more and more abusive and incoherent.

I have seen a number of "warmists" do this as well, but they are rarer. There is definitely something wrong with them.

Regarding posting at the watts place, I used to engage reasonably often, hoping that some arguments might rub off on lurkers, as most of the posters are obviously beyond redemption. My posts were moderated, don't know why, which prevents timely response to their rude rebuttals and uninformed arguments. I was suspended for pointing out that the great Anthony himself got his headline totally wrong - my post was simply a quote from the headline and the contradiction showing where he was wrong - no insults or anything like that. At that point I thought was doing more harm than good by providing entertainment and making the blog appear to be a discussion forum. It is galling to leave hopelessly misguided or deliberate falsehoods unchallenged, but I now believe that the restrictions and double standards imposed make any sort of discussion unproductive.

Nick Stokes seems to have found an approach that works and seems to make some impact, but he also has to battle against moderation periodically.

I found the posts where Griff or ToneB or someone else showed where the posters went wrong were more entertaining, and I certainly found it entertaining myself to engage at times. However, I am sure it is also more entertaining for the regulars and in the long run only serves to increase traffic and results in less rather than more enlightenment. I know this is a journey many others have travelled ad this is nothing new to most here.

Seaice:Yes, I think you are right. 99% of denizens are unreachable, and the 1% are prob invisible. I am trying for that 1%.Also, you must have googled stuff and clicked on "images". Many are from WU - so any I put up will be available to be shown to counter the "Tisdale" type graph. A minor point though I suppose.Mind, it gave me so much pleasure to stuff the Troll there yesterday.Groveled a little bit with thanking them.Well, why not use psychology?Oh, and I've learned never to criticise the great Anthony.I see he has put Tony Mcleod into moderation for having the temerity to chime in and make a few comments re the state of moderate (it was he that was being flamed by the said idiot).

"Mind, it gave me so much pleasure to stuff the Troll there yesterday."I so get that. It was a bit of a "guilty pleasure" and I guess the pleasure just wore off for me.

It is a dilemma. I am sure the message must get through to some. I think it was more of a discussion forum in years gone by. It seems to have become populated by offensive ignoramuses. DB Stealey seems to have gone, but there are plenty more to take his place. The level of faux outrage from many there at assumed slights on their character followed by total silence on outright insults from their cheerleaders got too much for me. The post you cite is a case in point.

The closest to a Red Team member at this year's AGU was Anastosius Tsonis, who both convened some sessions and authored or co-authored presentations.

Tsonis research is misguided as he claims that variability in climate is chaotic and unpredictable. He is the main feeder to Curry's uncertainty monster.

But could this view be changing? I left before this presentation that he coauthored with some colleagues

Synchronization and Causality Across Time-scales: Complex Dynamics and Extremes in El Nino/Southern Oscillation

"A suite of significant interactions between processes operating on different time scales was detected, and intermittent synchronization among different time scales has been associated with the extreme El Nino events. The mechanisms of these nonlinear interactions were further studied in conceptual low-order and state-of-the-art dynamical, as well as statistical climate models. Observed and simulated interactions exhibit substantial discrepancies, whose understanding may be the key to an improved prediction. "

Apparently the "Red Team" is on hold for now. One wonders if this will go the way of the GWPF "inquiry into global temperature adjustments" from a few years back. That is, a call for review that serves to garner press for awhile, but savvy enough tacticians to realize that actually having such a review risks exposing them for the frauds that they are. https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060069087

Tonight I heard (Rachel Maddow) that Scott Pruitt is angling to succeed the horrible Jeff Sessions ("climate science infringes on the prerogatives of the creator"). He would then have the power to prosecute climate scientists. I think the next 12 months are going to be bloody dangerous here. The forces of darkness are gaining strength and getting better and getting away with stuff.

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All you need to know about WUWT

WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary, Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase:

Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure.

Definition of Denier (Oxford): A person who denies something, especially someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence.
‘a prominent denier of global warming’
‘a climate change denier’

Alternative definition: A former French coin, equal to one twelfth of a Sou, which was withdrawn in the 19th century. Oxford. (The denier has since resurfaced with reduced value.)